Burnout, stress and confused values

Contemporary society, in particular, diagnoses stress and burnout. An aberration. A disorder. A disease. A personal failure. Mounting stress on stress. An absurdity so great that it causes great displacement.

But what if stress and burnout are deeper, more profound signals of a fundamental misalignment? A call to realign. How many really question that versus reaching for a pill or a quick fix? Society creates the conditions for the damage and then sells you the solution. An almost perfect capitalist loop.

Seen differently, perhaps it is a signal that you’re in an environment where your values are totally misaligned with your internal compass. A sign that something needs to change. More than a sign perhaps, a screaming out from both body and mind that something is deeply wrong and, for the sake of survival, needs to change. Both in psychological and physical terms.

The system isn’t going to help you make that change; instead, it’s going to shift the responsibility to you (cf. blame and credit). By delegating the responsibility to you, it deftly diverts your attention.

What if instead you reclaimed your agency? Altered your relationship with your environment, no matter the cost. Because no matter the cost, it will metaphorically and literally be cheaper than suffering further.

The challenge is this requires real courage. Courage to say something isn’t right. To say I don’t want the quick fix. To course-correct on a very profound level.

What level of cost is worth the suffering?